Lee reports a remarkable case of yawning followed by sneezing in
a girl of fifteen who, just before, had a tooth removed without
difficulty. Half an hour afterward yawning began and continued
for five weeks continuously. There was no pain, no illness, and
she seemed amused at her condition. There was no derangement of
the sexual or other organs and no account of an hysteric spasm.
Potassium bromid and belladonna were administered for a few days
with negative results, when the attacks of yawning suddenly
turned to sneezing. One paroxysm followed another with scarcely
an interval for speech. She was chloroformed once and the
sneezing ceased, but was more violent on recovery therefrom.
Ammonium bromid in half-drachm doses, with rest in bed for
psychologic reasons, checked the sneezing. Woakes presented a
paper on what he designated "ear-sneezing," due to the caking of
cerumen in one ear. Irritation of the auricular branch of the
vagus was produced, whence an impression was propagated to the
lungs through the pulmonary branches of the vagus. Yawning was
caused through implication of the third division of the 5th
nerve, sneezing following from reflex implication of the spinal
nerves of respiration, the lungs being full of air at the time of
yawning.
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